Parents under fire for taking their sick toddler on a long-haul flight
A couple has come under fire after documenting their experience online of boarding a long-haul flight with their toddler, despite the child being sick.
Alina and her husband were excited to go on their long-awaited holiday to Thailand with their one-year-old son in tow, taking off on their first big family trip.
However, shortly before they were set to take off, their child developed a raging fever, and they decided to go on the trip anyway.
Taking the experience to social media, Alina said her son’s temperature soared to around 40 degrees, with their little boy’s condition escalating so rapidly that the parents were considering calling off their entire trip.
“My husband and I even wanted to cancel the flight,” she confessed in the video, which has received around 1.4 million views.
However, after realising they would be out of pocket by several thousands of dollars if they cancelled the trip at such short notice, they decided to take the risk and board the plane.
“Our tickets would have been wasted, and the trip that cost us $3,000 would have been wasted,” the mum wrote. "One plus of this flight was that the flight was at night, and the child could sleep and recover.”
In the clip, the parents were seen walking their son around the plane, cradling the sick toddler as he cried uncontrollably.
Luckily, the parents “managed to bring down the temperature”, but they weren’t convinced their son would keep quiet for the rest of the trip.
“We were so worried about how the baby would feel on an eight-hour flight,” she continued, walking the baby up and down the corridors of the airport, trying to calm him down.
As they tried to settle the child, they realised that their hopes that he would sleep the whole way were misguided.
“The flight turned out to be difficult,” Alina confessed. “The baby kept waking and crying.”
In the middle of the night, their son’s fever returned, which forced the parents to “bring the temperature down again” and left them “very worried” about their son’s health.
Their baby’s fever took a toll on the parents as well, who complained of feeling “squeezed like a lemon” while trying to keep his temperature down, as Alina recalled, “We took turns looking after the baby so each of us could sleep.”
In a later video, the parents defended their choice to take their son on the flight despite his intense fever and blamed it on his teething, not sickness.
“Our baby wasn’t sick, he was teething, and that’s why he had a fever,” she said. “If our child had been sick, we would have cancelled everything … I consider myself a wonderful mother.”
Despite the mother's clarification of her son's fever, the parents were slammed for even considering taking a sick child on such a long flight.
“It’s OK, don’t worry about making anyone else on that flight sick,” a sarcastic comment read. “This is so tremendously selfish, you are appalling for doing this to him and others.”
“I was in the same situation,” another parent said. “I lost all bookings, but who cares, my daughter comes first always and forever, no matter the amount of money!”
“Trips come and go; your baby’s health is priceless!” read another comment. “Forty degrees is a hospital admission! Not a flight to Thailand!”
However, not everyone was as judgmental, with many parents extending their sympathies to the first-time parents, as one person wrote, “You know what’s best for your baby. Everyone will say things. But only you will know when you are in that situation.”
“Everyone is a first-time parent,” another defended. “This was a lesson learned. A baby’s health is of utmost importance. No holiday is more important than that. I hope he is OK now.”
Image credits: TikTok